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A new obsession

In an effort to lose the last few pounds of baby weight, I’ve been using My Fitness Pal. This is a really useful website which allows you to count and track the calories you’re consuming and burning. I had used it intermittently in the past, but had never really got to grips with it.

This time, however, I was encouraged by a friend to get into the community aspects of the site. Like on Facebook, you can become ‘friends’ with other users, and support each other.

In real life, talking about weight and diets is, frankly, boring. Fortunately, I think, it is a topic that rarely comes up for discussion amongst my friends and I. However, on a website like My Fitness Pal, the community aspect is interesting. There are clearly obsessives out there, who spend all day posting about how many calories they have consumed, but I imagine this happens in most online forums. There are also many sensible people, and many sharing inspiring stories of having lost significant amounts of weight. These people are encouraging and supporting each other, and viewing each others’ food diaries.

I’m currently slightly obsessed with looking at other peoples’ food diaries. There was also a thread recently where people put photos of what they were eating for each meal. Needless to say, I was fascinated. Admittedly, I have a bit more time on my hands than usual at the moment, and I’m sure that when I’m back at work I won’t have time to obsess over other people’s food, but I’m definitely enjoying it at the moment.

Sharing a food diary (with people who are happy to look at it) is a great way of keeping an eye on what you’re eating. For me, it helps me really see where things add up, and it’s not always where you’d expect. My morning smoothie (banana, strawberry and grape) took my sugar levels over the daily recommended amount. Despite eating what I would consider a balanced diet, my iron levels on most days struggled to get above 50% of my RDA. I won’t get started on the calorie content on some of my baking.

So I’ve lost a few pounds. They’ll probably come back on and go back off over the next few weeks, months and years. But it has made me feel much more balanced and educated about my diet, which can only be a good thing.